


All of Your Lonely Sieges

by WhenasInSilks



Category: Marvel, Marvel Ultimates
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Cabin Fic, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Ults Day, holy shit what's happened to Tony?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-03 06:27:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16320896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhenasInSilks/pseuds/WhenasInSilks
Summary: Steve and Tony are stranded in the wilderness. Things go downhill from there.The story of thirty-six hours.





	All of Your Lonely Sieges

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to wynnesome for lending me eyes and a brain when mine were failing, and to the 616 and 1610 SteveTony discords at large for brainstorming and research help, camaraderie, and general enabling. Go Team Ults Panic! 
> 
> Title from “Alcohol,” by Gogol Bordello.

**xiii.      T + 18:00 hours**

 

Tony wakes up confused. He does a good job of hiding it, does no more than stiffen in Steve’s arms for a moment, his back a flat, taut line against Steve’s stomach. Still, the moment is signal enough. Tony pulls his legs out from under Steve’s and twists around, as if he’s rolling over to greet him, but Steve can’t help but notice the way the new position leverages Tony’s forearm between his body and the mattress. Much easier, that way, to break free in a hurry, and that’s when Steve knows that something is wrong.

He knows it even before Tony blinks back heavy eyelids and searches Steve’s face with eyes that won’t quite focus. Knows it before Tony opens his mouth to speak, before Steve hears the slurred mumble of his voice.

“Morning, lovey,” he says, only the words all run together.   _Mmm’ningl’vey._ “Hell of a party last night.” He touches a hand to his head as if it’s paining him.

Steve wills his racing heart to calm. He has to keep his head. “Tony,” he says.

Tony starts at the sound of his own name.

“Do you know where you are?”

Tony frowns, as if the question is a ridiculous one. “Bed,” he says. And then, something kindling behind his wavering gaze, he smiles a tongue-touched smile and shifts closer. “With _you,_ ” he adds, still slurring, vowels loose and sloppy. He says it—Steve’s stomach clenches—like it’s the only thing that matters, like it’s his birthday and Steve is a present he can’t wait to unwrap, and indeed, his hand is straying towards Steve’s shirt collar—

Steve’s voice scrapes against his throat. “But do you know _where_?”

Tony goes stiff again, and then in the next minute he’s pulling back, out of Steve’s grasp. Steve lets him go but is unable to stop himself from reaching out a hand after him.

“Do you know,” he presses, “who I— who I—”

Tony’s pulse jumps in his throat. His jaw is clenched; his eyes roam over Steve’s face like a pair of vague blue spotlights.

Steve can see the moment when it all clicks into place. Tony’s limbs tighten for a third time, and his eyes snap into focus.

“Steve,” he says, and Steve lets out a shuddering sigh of relief.

“Tony.”

Tony squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head a little. His face tics a few times and then his eyes are open and he’s smiling once more. “Sorry about that, old boy. Got a bit mixed up for a second there. My head, you know. Feels like something died up there,” and then his ears seem to catch up to his lips and he goes still again.

There’s a scream crouching at the back of Steve’s throat. It was there when he went to bed and there when he woke up again. He thinks maybe it lives there now. But he doesn’t get to scream. He doesn’t get to rage, he doesn’t get to fight. There’s only Tony, and whatever it takes to get him through this.

“It’s fine,” he says, after far too long a pause. “Happens,” like it’s something normal, like it means nothing at all, but he knows it’s a lie, and from the quirk of Tony’s lips as he pushes himself up from the mattress, Tony knows it too.

  
 

* * *

 

 

 **v.** **T + 04:30 hours**

 

The forest is vast and monotonous, layer upon layer of sparsely needled gray pines as far as the eye can see. Winter has come early to this place, wherever it is. Every tree they pass is fringed in white and the ground crunches underfoot as they walk.

“I spy,” Tony’s voice singsongs through the modulator, “with my little eye, something beginning with an ‘s.’”

“Is it snow?” Steve asks, deadpan.

“Well, it’s certainly not Stoli, more’s the pity.”

Steve stops in his tracks.”What the hell is a stoley?”

“It’s a vodka. Russian.”

“And why the hell are you talking about—”

Tony spreads his arms wide. His red-gold armor is the only splash of color in all the landscape, apart from Steve himself. “Where do you think we are?”

“Canada,” Steve says.

Tony’s arms droop a little. “Beg pardon?”

Steve points upwards, to where the sun is just visible through the trees. “It’s passed noon while we’ve been walking. It was around two back in New York when we got here. This far north and three hours behind New York puts us in British Colombia, or maybe Yukon or the Northwest Territories.”

Tony lets his arms drop entirely now. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

Steve fights down the urge to preen. It’s so rare, after all, that he finds himself in a position where he knows more than Tony. So rare that anyone does. It’s odd, really, that Tony didn’t make the connection himself. Steve guesses maybe he was distracted. He’s certainly seemed distracted, although with the face plate up, it’s hard to tell.

“Still,” Tony is saying, “it’s a shame.”

“Why is that?”

“I was looking forward to the vodka. I never did get that Negroni, you know.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “I’m sure they have vodka in Canada, Tony. You can ask around when we get to the nearest settlement.”

He starts walking again.

“If,” Tony says from behind him.

Steve looks back over his shoulder.

Tony hasn’t moved. “Thirty-six thousand people in all of Yukon. That’s fewer than one person for every five square miles. Not when. If.”

Steve can’t think of anything to say to that.

Tony exhales noisily. “I could really,” he says, “use a drink.”

After that, they walk in silence.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 **xi.** **T + 11:00 hours**

 

Steve stares down at the array of circuitry before him. He plucks at the scrap of wire, tweezers looking stupidly undersized between his fingers; hunches his shoulders; and tries to ignore the heat of Tony’s breath against his neck.

“You know, normally I’m all in favor of men with big hands,” Tony sighs into his ear, “but under the circumstances…”

Tony is peering over his shoulder. In theory, he’s supposed to be giving Steve instructions, but the lighting is bad and Steve’s hands—massive, he thinks, oafish—keep blocking his line of sight. It’s not often Steve feels clumsy these days, but set him next to Tony, his rough hewn palms beside those long, clever fingers, the manicured nails and work-hardened calluses, the delicate architecture of the bone…

Unfortunately, Tony’s hands aren’t much use to either of them anymore, and Steve’s will have to do.

“Careful,” Tony says sharply. “Don't let it touch the solder—”

Steve grits his teeth. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

“Just put the wire aside for now and let me—”

Steve drops the wire and tweezers on the table and shifts back, surrendering the field. Tony comes forward, leaning over the mess of metal, silicon, and plastic that is all that remains of his left gauntlet. He’s been sweating, Steve notices. The back of his neck gleams in the lamplight as he shifts. It’s a lot, especially for zero degree weather. The smell is almost strong enough to drown out the spice of Tony’s cologne. It hasn’t soured, not yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

Tony draws back.

“You'll need to strip the wire and resolder the connections here, here, and here, but it is absolutely imperative that you not smear the solder or disturb anything else on the board. Don't so much as breathe on it. Can you do that?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Steve says grimly.

“And I’ll…” Tony trails off as Steve turns to look at him, gaze steady and uncompromising. He gives a huff of defeat. “I’ll sit quietly like a good boy and trust you to handle things.”

“Much appreciated.” Steve turns back to the board.

Tony being Tony, it isn’t long before he breaks the silence again. “And if I’m very good and quiet, do I get a reward?” Innuendo purrs through his voice, but Steve can tell his heart’s not really in it. He’s just trying to fill the empty space.

“What you’ll get,” Steve says, “is a functioning comms unit. Hopefully.”

“Hopefully,” Tony echoes. He doesn’t say anything after that for a long time, although he does get up and start pacing the room. Floorboards creak beneath his feet. Steve tunes it out.

The minutes tick by. Steve can feel the weight of accumulated time, heavy on his neck and shoulders. He feels more like he’s defusing a bomb than repairing a broken communicator.

At last, he sits back.

“Got it,” he says, pleased. “What’s next?”

Tony doesn’t answer, and Steve twists around to look for him.

Tony is swaying on his feet. His face has taken on a greenish cast, visible even with the warm lights of the fire playing over his skin. His throat works.

“I—” he manages. He convulses forward a little, one arm making a bar across his stomach, the other hand lifting to cover his mouth. “Sorry, I—”

Steve is already on his feet. In a few strides he’s across the room, hand on Tony’s back, guiding him out the door and down the hall.

“Come on. Bathroom’s this way. It’s not far. You can make it.”

Tony doesn’t make it.

There isn’t much time for tinkering after that.

 

* * *

 

 **ii.** **T + 00:20 hours**

 

Steve shifts uncomfortably, casting a dubious glance around the black leather interior of Tony’s second-best limousine. (“For day wear only,” Tony said, dark lashes fluttering distractingly against his cheeks. Steve has never been able to tell if he does that on purpose.)

Steve clears his throat and tries again.

“—using a portable device to create an—” He pulls a face, mouth working around the unwieldy words “—an anomalous spatiotemporal distortion—”

“Some ragtag cabal of disgruntled physicists have thrown together a portal gun and they’re using it to break into government facilities and steal away all their nasty little secrets, yes,” Tony interjects. “I did hear you the first time.” He waves his hand expansively. It’s a gesture Steve has seen him make dozens of times before, more often than not with a martini clasped between those languid fingers, and indeed, Tony casts a reproachful look at his hand, as if its emptiness is a personal affront. “My question is, why should I care?”

“If you don’t think preventing the theft of classified information is worth your time—” Steve begins hotly.

“To be perfectly frank, I don’t.” Tony sprawls back against the seat. One hand drums a lazy tattoo against his thigh. “That whole unfortunate affair with Banner has given me something of a distaste for government secrets. And I rather thought the whole point of setting up as a solo outfit was that we wouldn’t be expected to come a-running every time dear Nick stubbed his toe.”

“It’s a lot bigger than a stubbed toe, Tony.”

“The point stands.”

Steve grits his teeth. Nick had warned him Tony might drag his feet, and he suddenly doesn’t know which is worse, that he and Nick Fury have been talking about Tony behind Tony’s back, or that Fury’s assessment was right. He doesn’t like to imagine Tony’s reaction if he mentioned that part of the conversation aloud. Betrayal? Eyes shuttering, face hardening as he turned away? Disappointment? Contempt? Or—worst of all—amusement, as if this—as if _Steve_ is nothing more than what Tony expected.

Steve is loyal to his team first and foremost, but even he can see how important this mission is, and he thought that Tony would too. That’s the trouble with Tony. He’s slippery. Just when Steve thinks he’s gotten him pinned down Tony wriggles and shifts into another shape entirely.

Steve changes tactics. “You really think they’re going to stop with government secrets? Everyone knows you keep all the really good stuff to yourself. How good is your security, Tony? Good enough to handle a few—” and this time Steve relishes every damn syllable “—anomalous spatiotemporal disruptions?”

Tony’s face doesn’t change, which says a lot away in and of itself. He hums consideringly under his breath, and, a moment later, sighs. “How is the director these days? It seems he and I have some catching up to do.”

 

* * *

 

**vii.      T + 07:00 hours**

 

The house is small—or maybe compact is a better description, cheap to heat and cozy enough to withstand the harsh climate—but Steve takes his time exploring it. It’s partly to give Tony the space he so clearly desires, but the thoroughness is an end in and of itself, with so few resources at their disposal and the mystery of the house—and more particularly, its emptiness—weighing heavy on his mind.

Besides the broken generator, the basement contains several stacks of boxes and a root cellar. The boxes, on closer inspection, are packed full of gear for heavy weather—ice picks and snowshoes, things like that. Whoever lived here must’ve left before the season turned. The root cellar is bare of produce but well stocked with non-perishables, soup and beans and rice, canned fruit and stack upon stack of tinned meats. Steve can’t quite suppress a smile, imagining the look on Tony’s face if Steve went back upstairs and announced they’d be eating Spam for dinner.

Steve continues his exploration and any inclination to smile vanishes. The beds in the bedroom are neatly made, but the dressers are filled with clothing. A trio of dark shapes at the back of the closet prove to be a duffel bag and two empty suitcases. Two winter coats hang untouched on pegs in the mudroom.

The bathroom tells him all he needs to know. Something falls with a hollow clatter as he enters; stepping inside, he finds two jugs of bleach behind the door. One is upright; the other has been knocked onto its side. Both are empty.

There are faint, reddish stains around the drain in the bathtub. They don’t look like rust stains, not really. Steve feels his stomach turn.

Briefly, he continues saying nothing. Carrying the knowledge alone. Tony’s got his repairs to focus on. And—Steve thinks of Tony as he last saw him, the deep grooves setting in at the corners of his mouth—and surely it’s got to be better, not knowing—surely that unease must be easier to bear than the certainty that sits like a stone in Steve’s gut.

But Tony is his teammate—his partner. Partners protect each other, but they trust each other too. This secret isn’t Steve’s to keep. Something crawls its way down his spine—relief or dread, he isn’t sure.

The fire is burning in the fireplace when Steve enters the living room. Tony sits hunched at the dinner table, what looks like his helmet and most of one gauntlet disassembled and spread out before him. The oil lamp is set haphazardly among the mess. It doesn’t cast nearly enough light for the kind of fiddly work Tony must be doing; it’s got to be hell on the eyes. Steve decides not to comment.

“The, ah—”

At the sound of Steve’s voice, Tony starts. Every line of his body is tense; he looks jumpy as a rabbit. The flames from the lamp gleams yellow in his eyes for a moment. It makes him looks strange, inhuman, half wild. Then he shifts and the light changes and it’s only Tony again, tight and drawn and doing the best he can.

Steve clears his throat and tries again. “The people who lived here. They— I think—”

“Dead?” Lamplight glints off a smile like broken glass, brittle and sharp. “I know.”

“How—?”

Tony gestures to the wall. It’s a moment before Steve sees what he’s pointing at. The wallpaper is discolored with age, blotchy and floral but now that Steve is looking, he can see that some of the blotches aren’t part of the pattern. Or rather, they form a distinctive pattern of their own, one Steve recognizes all too well.

It’s a blood spatter.

Something swells in him, a formless mass of anger and helplessness surging up through his chest and into his throat, and no one here to aim it towards except Tony, who didn’t tell him— _partners tell each other things,_ Steve thinks—no one except Tony, who can take it.

“Why the hell,” he spits, “didn’t you say something?”

The piece Tony has been fiddling with drops to the table with a clatter.

“Say _what_?” Tony’s voice is climbing. “‘Have you seen the living room, Cap? I think the brain matter splashed across the wainscotting is a particularly homey touch.’ It’s a fucking charnel house, and there’s nothing— We can’t—” He shoves his chair back and puts his hands over his face, holds them there for a long moment. Laughs into his palms, as flat and mirthless a sound as Steve has ever heard. “Nothing for it. Needs must, I suppose.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, after a moment. He feels, suddenly, bruisingly, too much. Too big, too loud, too angry, too—too _everything._ “I shouldn’t have—”

Tony waves the apology away. “No, no, none of that.” He draws a breath and resettles himself at the table. “Find anything else interesting?”

Steve thinks of the well-stocked cellar. “There was—” He cuts himself short.

“There was…?”

Steve is staring now, he knows he is, but he can’t help himself. His chest has gone tight, pinched with worry. “Is everything— I mean, are you—” God, he’s terrible at this. He wishes, not for the first time, that Tony were a soldier, a subordinate, someone who would obey his orders and report to him without question. Everything about Tony is a question, or maybe just an answer in a language Steve doesn’t know how to read.

“Am I _what_?”

“It’s cold,” Steve settles.

Tony looks up at him in something like disbelief. “Yes, thank you, Steve. I had noticed.”

“I just meant, you’re not really dressed for—” Steve shifts his weight. “And there’s some clothes upstairs, and in the mudroom.”

“My clothes,” Tony says, with clipped precision, “will serve me just fine.”

To hell with pussyfooting around. Steve’s never been any good at it anyway.

“Tony. You’re shaking.”

“What? No, I—” Tony looks down at his body as if it has betrayed him. “That can’t be—”

Steve steps forward, lays a palm to Tony’s shoulder. Leaves it there long enough for Tony to feel the steadiness of Steve’s body and its contrast against his own. Then he steps back and clears his throat.

“I can see about stoking the fire, but in the meantime, I think I saw a coat that might—”

“I don’t want,” Tony says, voice rising sharply, “the fucking coat!”

The words echo around the confines of the cabin.

Steve stares at him, too shocked to take offense. He’s never seen Tony like this, all this taut, barely suppressed anger. Tony is always so… relaxed. Laissez-faire. There’s nothing he can’t shrug off with a drink and a smile. But now… All that rage, so tightly wound… It’s like looking into a dark-haired mirror. Steve isn’t sure he likes it. In fact, he’s certain he doesn’t.

“A blanket,” Tony says finally. “Or a towel. No—no clothes, please.” His jaw is set, like he’s expecting Steve to argue.

Steve knows better than that. It’s something you have to get over pretty quick as a soldier, that kind of squeamishness. He’s done a lot worse in his time than wear a dead man’s clothes. But then, Tony isn’t a soldier.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he says, and walks out of the room, leaving Tony alone with the lamplight and the bloodstains and his broken-down armor. Tony’s voice trails him down the hallway.

“And let me know if you find any booze. I could—” Steve mouths the words right along with him “—really use a drink.”

 

* * *

 

**xii.      T + 13:00 hours**

 

It’s a few hours before the vomiting stops entirely. Tony manages to expel the whole of his dinner—what little he ate of it, anyway—over the first two or three bouts. After that, it’s just bile, and when that too is gone, he dry heaves over the toilet for minutes at a time, neck and throat convulsing in horrible, wheezing gulps. Somewhere between the fifth and sixth rounds, Steve bullies him into drinking a little water. Tony throws that up too. Steve thinks he heard somewhere that you’re supposed to hold back someone’s hair when they’re sick, but Tony’s hair is too short for that, so Steve just rubs the base of Tony’s neck and pretends not to notice the tears that sparkle at the corners of his eyes.

“It could be food poisoning,” Steve says at one point.

Tony’s voice is hoarse. The bile has burned his throat raw. “If it was food poisoning, you’d be down here with me.”

“Super soldier,” Steve points out.

Tony rolls an eye over to look at him. His scelera is riddled with burst blood vessels; strangely, the contrast only makes the blue of his iris all the more luminous.

“It’s not food poisoning,” is all Tony says.

In between bouts Tony rests, slumped against the wall, arms wrapped across his stomach, face tight with pain. Steve finds a dusty bottle of aspirin in the cabinet behind the mirror, but Tony takes one look at the pills and starts vomiting again. So Steve does what he can with soft touches and soothing words, neither of which come naturally to him, while inside his head he rants and rages at the futility of it all.

He is horribly aware, throughout the whole ordeal, of the bathtub beside them. He never told Tony about what he’d found in the bathroom, and it feels wrong in some fundamental way, that Tony should be here, broken down and in pain and all the while _not knowing._ But he’s sure as hell not going to tell Tony he’s puking his guts out not three feet away from the closest thing this house’s owners have to a coffin.

Finally, even the retching subsides.

“Bed?” Steve asks, and Tony— he’s so tired he can barely even muster a wink.

“I thought you’d never ask,” he says.

With the generator broken, the living room is the only place in the house warm enough for a baseline human, so Steve hauls the mattress out of the bedroom and sets it in front of the fire.

“There’s only one bed,” he tells Tony, who is sitting on the floor, knees to his chest, watching. “So we’ll have to share.”

Tony gets a look on his face and Steve feels something within him begin to fray again.

“If that’s a problem—”

“Not like that,” Tony says hastily, “just— I’m worried I’ll keep you awake, darling.”

Steve notes the endearment, the shift from the convivial ‘old boy’ into something softer, more intimate. He doesn’t know what to do with that awareness, though, so he shelves it for now. “I bet you say that to all the fellas.”

Tony laughs, and then winces. “Don’t make me laugh, please. It hurts.”

They end up laying side by side on the mattress. Tony is curled on his side, facing the fire. Steve lies on his back, staring up into the darkness and waiting for Tony to stop shifting, waiting for his breathing to change, to even, to slow.

It never does.

“Fuck,” Tony says, softly.

Steve hesitates, then reaches out, dares to touch Tony’s back. It feels, somehow, far more intimate here, lying together. “What do you usually do when you can’t sleep?”

“Usually,” Tony says wryly, “the issue does not arise. The secret is two ounces of whiskey, taken neat, every night before bed.”

Steve breathes in deep. “Well. That’s not exactly on the table, so…”

“A fact of which I am painfully aware.”

“Is there anything else you can think of that might help?”

There’s a pause.

“Well,” Tony says, voice pitched low and thrumming in a way that goes straight to Steve’s groin, “now that you mention it…” and he’s lying so close, and he smells like sweat, yes, but that sweat smells like Tony and—

“No,” Steve says, firmly.

“You asked.”

“And now I’m saying no.”

Tony sighs and shifts again.

“Maybe if you’d stop flailing,” Steve suggests.

“I can’t help it. I’m a restless sleeper.”

“You aren’t sleeping.”

“Well, then,” and the smile in Tony’s voice, weary as it is, casts a warmth all its own, “I’m a restless lounger.”

“What you are,” Steve corrects, “is a pain in my ass. Come here.” He turns onto his side and shoots out an arm to haul Tony closer, throwing a leg over one of Tony’s to lock him in place. “There,” he grunts, satisfied.

“So, you think nothing of getting on top of me, but you refuse to get me off?” Tony asks, indignant. “I call that very bad form.”

“Call it what you like,” Steve tells him. He thinks about it. “Or don’t. In fact, shut up.”

Tony’s grumbling seems mostly formulaic, and soon subsides.

“You make a surprisingly comfortable straightjacket,” he remarks a little while later.

“Be quiet, Tony.”

“A little dictatorial for my tastes, but—”

_“Quiet.”_

Eventually, Tony relaxes in Steve’s arms, his breath going soft and even. Only then does Steve allow himself to sleep.

When Tony wakes up several hours later, he doesn’t remember who Steve is.

 

* * *

 

**iii.       T + 02:30 hours**

 

Tony is not especially pleased to discover he’s been brought in, not as a consultant, but as an active participant in a sting that has been planned for weeks and is set to take place within a matter of hours.

“You’re too conspicuous,” Fury says, unrepentant. “In the suit or out of it. We’ve spent weeks infiltrating these Advanced Idea motherfuckers and I wasn’t about to risk blowing it all to hell just to salve your ego, Stark.”

Tony’s brief but eloquent suggestion of what else Nick might like to do with his salve is, Steve considers, fairly restrained under the circumstances. Steve isn’t too happy about the situation himself—he was only brought in a few days before Tony, and even those few days of keeping the secret from his teammates had weighed upon him. But he’s a soldier, and he does what’s needed.

Apart from the generalized flirtation Tony emits like low-level radiation, and one awkward incident when he asks a three-star general to bring him a Negroni, “easy on the ice”—“So, sorry, old chap, mistook you for a waiter,” Tony says with a winning smile, as Ross splutters into his walrus mustache—Tony is focused and entirely professional. He liaises quite cordially with Jan and the SHIELD technologists, who will be monitoring the operation remotely, and the whole thing might well have gone off without a hitch if AIM hadn’t made their break in five and a half hours ahead of schedule.

So now Steve is running, trying to navigate the world’s most top secret rabbit warren down to the ominously named “Subbasement-D,” Tony flying along at his side and bickering with Nick Fury over the comms.

“What do you _mean_ the security system’s got no back door?”

“Do you have any idea how classified that archive is?” Fury demands. “Even I barely know a fraction of what’s in there. So no. Once lockdown protocols are engaged, they have to be deactivated from both sides before the doors will open.”

“But if you knew you were dealing with teleporters, why on earth wouldn’t you—”

_“Can you break in, or not?”_

Tony scoffs. “Of course I can break in; it’s my systems you've based it on.”

Finally, they’ve made it down to the right level. Tony is doing something complicated on a glowing computer screen by the door, while Steve rolls back his shoulders and readies himself for the charge.

“Don’t forget,” Nick is saying in their ears. “Sub-D’s a dead zone—no signals go in, none come out. We won’t be able to hear or see you, and you won’t be able to hear us.”

“And what a loss that will be,” Tony mutters. “And… _there_.” He punches a button and the doors slide open.

It’s easy to pick out the SHIELD employees from the agents of AIM. The SHIELD employees are the ones in the corner with their hands on their heads; the terrorists are the ones in the black and yellow suits opening fire on him. That’s fine. Steve likes it when they make things simple.

They’re shooting energy beams, which deflect even more neatly than bullets off his shield.

“On your ten,” Tony calls from overhead. “By the computer banks,” and indeed, there’s a black and yellow figure hastily extracting what looks like some kind of drive. Steve smiles grimly, and charges.

The agent knows they’ve been made. They shout a garbled command to one of their fellows; there’s a strange fizzling noise, and all of a sudden the air by the computer banks is parting in a colored slash of light, like a gash in reality. The agent starts running.

 _Oh no you don’t,_ Steve thinks, diving after them, but it’s too late—the gash fizzles and sparks as the agent makes a running jump and vanishes inside.

“Steve, no! Wait—” he hears from behind him, but Steve doesn’t stop. He leaps through the portal, Tony’s frantic cry still echoing in his ears. The world goes… _strange._

 

* * *

 

**viii.     T + 08:00 hours**

 

Steve volunteers to make dinner. It isn’t the first time he’s gotten stuck on kitchen duty while camping in hostile territory, and anyway, even if Tony weren’t still busy with his armor, Steve strongly suspects he’s the type of man who could burn water.

He gathers the requisite tins and packages from the cellar, tossing them into a bag he liberated from the bedroom and feeling calmer than he has in hours. It’s having something to do that makes the difference.

He heads back up the cellar stairs, humming under his breath. Bucky always said he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket but then, Bucky isn’t around to complain now, is he? The thought causes a pang, but only a brief one.

“Corned beef hash for dinner tonight,” he says, entering the living room. Not quite like his mother used to make, but close enough to put a smile on his face.

“Mm?” Tony says, absently. He’s got the wool blanket Steve brought him tucked around his shoulders, and it gives Steve a small burst of satisfaction to see it there.

“And for dessert, peaches in syrup. Although,” he adds, thoughtfully, “we really should figure out what to do with all this Spam. It’s almost like being back on the front lines again.”

“What?”

“Special Army Meat. Kept us alive and fighting fit all through the winter of ‘43, although it was enough to make some of us wish it hadn’t.”

Tony blinks, as if surfacing from a trance. “I’m sorry, remind me what we’re talking about?”

“Spam.” Steve shakes his bag so the cans clatter together in illustration.

“What, like, junk mail?”

Steve searches Tony’s face for any sign that he’s joking, and finds none.

“Never mind,” he says, feeling abruptly out of temper.

“I’m sure whatever you make will be splendid,” Tony says. “Really, I’m not fussed,” and with that, he turns back to his work, dismissing Steve from his attention.

It’s a moment before Steve can force his feet to move. Resentment has rooted him to the spot. He knows Tony is distracted—knows Tony doesn’t mean anything by it, but the way Tony acts sometimes, like the people around him are only there for his convenience, like _Steve_ is—

“Oh,” Tony adds, looking up again and half-smiling. “And a martini would be lovely, if you can swing it.”

Steve’s patience, never particularly supple, has reached its snapping point.

“I am not,” he says through gritted teeth, “your fucking bartender, Tony.”

Tony has the gall to look surprised. “No, no,” he says, placating, “of course not—”

“And don’t you think,” Steve rolls on, “that after hours of listening to your whining, I’d’ve mentioned if there was so much as a drop of booze in this damn house?”

Now Tony is looking faintly ill. “I— I know. I’m sorry. I haven’t been making things easier, have I? It’s just…” He scrubs a hand across his mouth, an uncharacteristically inelegant gesture. “I’ve been doing the math—it’s got to be at least eight hours since my last drink, and it’s been preying on my mind rather.”

Steve breathes in. Breathes out. “Well, I’m not too happy about missing _Days of Our Lives_ , but I’m sure it’ll still be there waiting when we get back.”

He hoists the sack of cans over his shoulder and turns towards the kitchen.

Behind him, Tony lets out a high-pitched giggle. The sound is so utterly unlike him that Steve turns back around to look.

Tony’s legs are spread wide, his chair tilting precariously on its back legs. One arm is outflung, braced against the wall; Tony’s other hand is pressed to his lips.

“I— Oh, fuck. You don’t understand, do you?”

Steve has just begun to take offense when Tony lowers his hand and looks at him straight-on. He smiles. The smile is wide, charming, a little bit wry, and the wave of fear that it sends through Steve sweeps away any lingering resentment. He knows that smile. That’s Tony’s bad news smile. That’s the smile he wore when he told the Ultimates he had less than five years left to live.

“I should’ve said something earlier,” Tony says. “I just— I thought you knew. I mean, everyone knows. It’s not exactly a secret. I thought you were just being polite about it.”

Steve’s heart is hammering in his throat. “Spit it out, Tony.”

Tony licks his lips. “I’m an alcoholic,” he says.

The relief that goes through Steve is almost giddy. He wants to laugh. Wants to give Tony the dressing down of his life, for scaring him like that, for making him think it was something serious.

“I mean, sure, you like a drink as much as the next guy.” Then, feeling the sheer magnitude of this understatement, he amends, “a bit more than the next guy, maybe, but…” He trails off. He doesn’t know what to say. The only people he ever heard talking about ‘alcoholism’ when he was growing up were the dour temperance campaigners. It’s difficult to imagine any group of people less like Tony. He remembers how the neighborhood kids used to jeer at them from the street corners. They’d all but vanished, anyway, when the Depression began. People had other things to worry about, more important things.

Tony’s laugh this time is little more than air. “That’s, uh. Terribly sweet of you, but it isn’t a question of spin. I’ve got a chemical dependence. An addiction. I’m no better than any junkie off the street, just… better groomed.” He glances down at the ugly wool blanket, mostly fallen from his shoulders. “Or at least, I was.”

Steve’s tongue feels fat, swollen and useless in his mouth. He doesn’t understand. He’s known drunks. Tony is nothing like them. Tony’s the most capable person he’s ever met, Tony is—

Tony is looking straight at him. He’s still smiling, but his eyes are wide and scared.

“What do you think happens,” he says softly, “to a junkie when he can’t get his fix?”

 

* * *

 

**xvi.     T + 24:00 hours**

 

“Has this ever happened before?” Steve asks.

“Once.”

“What happened then?”

Tony gives a short laugh. “What the hell do you think happened?” His smile is bleak. “I found myself a drink.”

 

* * *

 

**iv.     T + 02:40 hours**

 

Traveling through the portal is like nothing Steve has ever felt before, or hopes to feel again. It’s a little like having his skin unzipped, turned inside out, and zipped back up the wrong way round, but mostly it’s nothing like that at all. Everything goes weird and electric for a moment, and then the inside-out feeling is gone, replaced by a far more concrete sensation of falling.

Steve has just enough time to register _cold_ before the earth is hurtling upwards to meet him. He hits the ground shoulder first, rolls to his feet, and spins on the spot, searching for a splash of yellow in a world of white and gray. He just has time to register the object of his pursuit—or something much like them—lying slumped against a nearby tree when an ominous electrical whine sends him diving earthwards once more. A colored beam of light shoots over his head.  He swings the shield around just in time to catch a second beam of energy and send it ricocheting back towards its source.

There’s a startled shout, and he’s just drawing back his arm to send his shield spinning after the sound when the air fizzles and something large, heavy, and metallic drops from the sky and sends him crashing to the ground.

The metallic thing is wriggling and cursing on top of him. He heaves it off of him, a split-second before his brain processes the voice.

“Tony?”

Before Tony has a chance to reply, there’s another ear-splitting whine. Steve throws up his shield, but he’s not the target. The bolt of energy strikes Tony square in the chest. He yelps, and then goes limp.

Everything goes slow and focused and very clear after that. Steve rolls to the side, deflects another blast of energy, draws back his arm, and throws the shield. It hits his assailant square in the throat. There’s a crunch and a wet gurgle, followed by the sound of a body hitting the ground, and then there is only silence.

Looking up, he sees that the distortion has vanished from the sky. The portal has closed.

Steve gets to his feet, and looks around him. The terrorist he’d been chasing is slumped unmoving against the tree; now that Steve has time to look, he can see the unnatural angle of their head. Broken neck, Steve diagnoses. It must’ve happened when the portal spat them out. The other two assailants are sprawled on the ground, the first with a slash seared across their yellow chest, the second with Steve’s shield embedded in their throat. They shouldn’t have used lethal force, he thinks, shoving away any horror or pointless remorse. And they shouldn’t have attacked T— his teammate.

_Tony._

Movement flashes red and gold in his peripheral vision as Tony groans and begins to struggle upright. Steve hurries to his side.

“Tony,” he says. “Are you—?”

“I’m fine,” he says, “I’m— Damn.” His voice sounds wrong. It takes a moment for Steve to realize this is because it’s his normal, unmodulated voice, slightly muffled by the helmet. Tony reaches up to flip open his visor, then promptly yelps and slams it back down again. “Good lord, that’s cold.” He thumps himself on the chest. The light at the center of his chest, which Steve has only just realized has gone dim, flickers on for a second, then dies. “The agents?”

“Dead. What’s wrong with the suit?”

“Suit’s fried. I’m down to basic life support functions now. Climate control, um... Well, that’s really it at the moment. Not sure how long that’ll last, either, in these conditions. It’s positively glacial.”

“It’s no summer in Reno, that’s for sure,” Steve acknowledges.

“Are you going to be alright? That uniform isn’t exactly rated for this kind of weather.”

Steve shrugs. “I’ll live.” He’s not exactly crazy about the cold, but he’ll make do.

Tony hesitates, propped on one elbow. “This isn’t a… machismo thing, is it? Because it’s not that the strong and silent thing isn’t working for me—you wear it remarkably well—”

“It’s a super soldier thing,” Steve cuts in. “What do you need to fix…?” He gestures at the suit.

“Well,” Tony says, and heaves himself into a seated position, waving Steve away when he reaches out to steady him, “the first thing I need is somewhere I can strip down without risking frostbite. Or snow in my lovely circuitry. And I wouldn’t say no to dinner and a hot toddy.”

“Let’s focus on the first two things,” Steve says firmly. “Unless you think it’s better to wait for SHIELD?”

“I think,” Tony says, “that the general rule of ‘if lost, stay where you are until found’ doesn’t apply when where you are is a terrorist drop site.” He hesitates again. “SHIELD might be able to determine our location, if they’ve captured the portal device, or they might not. There’s… really no way of knowing.”

Steve nods. The reasoning is sound, however little he likes it. “We’ll cover our tracks,” he says, casting a critical eye over the three bodies, “and then…” He squints around at the barren landscape. No sign of a road, no footprints but their own and those of their late assailants. He looks up at the angle of the sun.

“Then?” Tony prompts.

“We go south.”

They bury the agents as best they can beneath the snow.  Then they go south.

 

* * *

 

 **ix.** **T + 09:00 hours**

 

Despite Steve’s urging, Tony does little more than pick at his dinner.

“It’s not a reflection on your cooking,” he assures Steve. “I’m just not terribly hungry at the moment.”

“You haven’t eaten in hours,” Steve says, but Tony only sighs. “Tony. Eat.”

Tony gives a shrug, and begins to count off on his fingers. “Irritability—sorry again for that, old boy. Loss of appetite. Shaking. Excessive sweating. Nausea. Headaches and abdominal pain. Insomnia. And after that—” He cuts himself off with a grimace. “Well. The point is, I really do mean it when I say, ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’”

Steve has frozen, fork halfway lifted to his mouth. Now he sets it down on his plate, untouched. “Go on,” he says, grimly. “What comes next?”

“It doesn’t really make for pleasant dinner table conversation.”

“I’m going to find out sooner or later. Better sooner, don’t you think?”

Tony expels air in a huff and rakes his fingers through his hair. “Severity of symptoms will increase as time passes.” All languidness has gone from his voice. The words are sharp, clipped, the tone almost clinical. “Add in confusion, high blood pressure, and hallucinations after the first twelve hours, with the possibility of seizures after twenty-four. In particularly severe cases, delirium tremens may set in around the second or third day; without treatment, the risk of death is… not insignificant.” He sniffs and wipes his hand across his lips. “There. Do you feel adequately prepared?”

“Fucking—” Steve shoves back from the table and starts to pace. He tries to push away the images that crowd into his mind—Tony, trembling and covered in his own sick—Tony, pouring sweat and shrinking from invisible terrors _(like any junkie on the street, he’d said)_ —Tony white eyed and shaking, spittle gathering on his lips—Tony dying, Tony dead, Tony _dying_ and Steve helpless to save him—

“How could you let this happen?” he demands.

“Well, if you recall, I didn’t exactly plan this little jaunt—”

“How could you let it get this _bad_?” You’re supposed to be a genius, he wants to shout. You’re supposed to be in control. You’re supposed to know better.

Tony shrugs, like it’s… like it’s a _circumstance,_ like it’s something that’s just happened to him, rather than something he did to himself—has been doing, every damn day and Steve never knew—

“How long have you known? That it was this serious?”

“Oh,” Tony says, like he’s glad to get an easy question. “Years. For much longer than you’ve known me.”

Something inside Steve slips loose from its tether. He stops, turns, and drives his fist through the hideous fucking wallpaper. There’s a spray of plaster; he can hear Tony coughing somewhere behind him. When the air clears, he catches a glimpse of the basement staircase through the hole he’s just made.

“I do hope that wall wasn’t load-bearing,” Tony remarks. His very placidity seems wrong, twisted, the worst kind of affront.

“And all that time,” Steve says, fighting to keep his voice level even as his chest heaves, “you never tried to fix things?”

That seems to give Tony pause. He opens his mouth.. Closes it again. Chews on his mustache for a moment. “The only way to ‘fix things’, as I understand it, is to stop,” he says finally, “and I don’t know how to stop. It’s never really occurred to me to try.” His mouth gives a wry pull. “It’s never seemed worth the risk.”

“The _risk_?” Steve explodes. “You—”

“The things I do… I don’t know if I could do them if I was sober. We can’t all be brave, like you. We can’t all be heroes.” Tony looks down at his palms. “Some of us need the extra help.”

Steve can’t move. Can’t think. Can barely even breathe. Every interaction they’ve ever had, every word ever said between them seems weighted with a horrible new significance. Is that really how Tony sees him? As some impossible ideal? Or worse, as a stick to beat himself with? A reminder of his own inadequacies—an excuse to crawl back into the bottle?

He is suddenly sure that if he spends any longer here, in this room with Tony, he’s going to end up hitting him, and he doesn’t want to hit him.

He swallows. “I’m going out,” he says, indistinctly. “Firewood.”

Tony says nothing.

There are more words, pushing against the cage of Steve’s teeth, and he’s trying to keep them from getting out, but it’s a battle he doesn’t really want to win.

In the doorway he stops. “You’ve got a lot of nerve,” he says, “lecturing me about the kind of man you are, when you’ve never even put down the bottle long enough to find out.”

He leaves. Tony doesn’t follow.

 

* * *

 

**xv.     T + 23:00 hours**

 

Steve is in the kitchen. Tony’s just come out of one of his spells of confusion, but he’s lucid now, and Steve’s noticed the confusion spells don’t generally come back to back, so he feels okay about leaving Tony alone for a few minutes.

Tony’s voice wavers in from the living room. Steve can barely hear him over the clink of glassware and aluminum. “What are you doing in there?”

“I told you,” Steve says, “I’m looking for an empty soda bottle. Something with a narrow neck.”

Tony’s shaking is too severe now for him to drink from an ordinary cup; his last two attempts had ended up with water all over his front and almost none down his throat.

“Creative problem solving. I can see why they put you in charge of the team.” Even Tony’s voice is unsteady.

“I think that probably had more to do with—” Steve stops abruptly.

“To do with…? Steve? What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” Steve says, too quickly. “To do with the the look of it, I was going to say. Um, optics, I think you’d say now.”

“You’re a terrible liar, darling.” Tony’s voice is coming closer. “Remind me to give you a few tips.”

“You’re supposed to be resting,” Steve says, desperately, but Tony is through the doorway now. His gaze snaps unerringly to the empty bottle in Steve’s hand, to the letters which march boldly across the label: _Canadian Club._

“Tony, it was in the trash—” he starts to say, but it’s no good. Tony is across the kitchen, wresting the bottle from Steve’s hand, and upending it down his throat.

Steve wonders if Tony is able to feel the shame of the moment or if he’s too far gone for that. It doesn’t matter. Steve feels it enough for both, a terrible admixture of horror and pity that bubbles beneath his skin and clenches in his throat.

Tony lowers the bottle from his lips. His hand is shaking worse than ever. “Nothing,” he says. “Not even the fumes.” Before Steve can stop him, he’s pulled his arm back and thrown the bottle across the room.

Steve shoves him to the floor, twisting around so his back is between Tony and the site of impact, shielding Tony’s body with his own. He waits for the crash, for the sting of glass against his skin. It never comes. There’s only a dull thunk; when Steve looks back around, the bottle is lying on the floor, unbroken. The throw was too weak, Steve realizes. Tony hasn’t even manged to crack the glass.

He turns back to Tony, scrunched up on the ground under him, eyeing Steve with flat and weary interest.

Steve wants to yell. Curse. Pound the ground. Throw something of his own.

He doesn’t. Instead he pulls back and settles on the floor a few feet away, leaving Tony to struggle up into a seated position on his own.

“That was stupid,” he observes, evenly.

Tony drags himself laboriously across the floor until his back is leaned against one of the cabinets. “Of course it was stupid,” he says, pulling his knees to his chest. “Everything about this is stupid.” He rocks forward, touches his forehead to his knees. Gives a watery sniff that Steve pretends not to hear. He leans back again, tilting his head back. “This is a stupid fucking way to die,” he tells the ceiling.

Steve’s heart clenches.

“You’re not dying,” he says. Like everything he says—everything he _does_ , it comes out wrong. Too harsh. Anyway, it’s not true. Tony has been dying as long as Steve has known him, but not like this, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph not like this.

Tony casts him a sideways look. His mouth twitches in a parody of his rogue’s smile. “I’ll take that bet,” he says.

 

* * *

 

**vi.     T + 06:30 hours**

 

They’ve been walking for almost four hours, by Steve’s estimation, when they come across the cottage. It’s set in a small, flat clearing at the base of a wooded hill. Hard to defend, Steve notes. The only easy cover sits on an uphill slope, and even then, they can’t exactly count on facing an enemy too stupid to circle round the back.

Tony’s thoughts are apparently running along different lines.

“Almost sickeningly picturesque, isn’t it?”

“You complaining?”

“Christ, no.” Tony nods at a fenced in area to the left of the house. “Subsistence farmers, probably.”

Steve looks where he’s indicated. A few withered stalks peep up through a field of snow.

“Doesn’t look like they’ve been doing much subsisting recently,” he says.

The front door is unlocked. Steve supposes there’s not a lot of danger from housebreakers out here, but… still. There’s something off about the place. The isolation, the unlocked door, the dead garden—the picture is far from complete, but what he can see of it sets unease prickling down his spine.

The feeling gets worse when they go inside. The house has clearly been abandoned for some time. A thin layer of dust lies across most of the surfaces, and the light switch isn’t working.

“Of course there’s no electricity,” Tony mutters. “I don’t know why I ever imagined there would be.”

“Those look like oil lamps to me,” Steve says, nodding towards the windowsill. “And there’s the fireplace.” He’s not sure how he feels about the idea of a fireplace. Too much danger of the smoke attracting the wrong sort of attention. But if the alternative is Tony freezing to death…

Tony seems to agree. “It’s something. Let’s try and find the generator.”

A few minutes past finds them in the cellar. Tony is crouched down low, peering inside something that resembles a stout metal coffin. Steve holds one of the oil lamps over his head, providing light. The other lamp Tony has set on the floor a little way away.

Tony sits back on his haunches.

“Well?” Steve asks.

“Generator’s dead.”

Steve bites back a sharp retort. “Can you fix it?”

“Probably.” Tony cocks his head. He’s not looking at Steve, just staring at the side of the generator. Steve can’t imagine what possible information Tony could be gathering from a sheet of unmarked metal, but then, he’s not the engineer. “Maybe,” Tony amends. “It depends on how much fuel there is, and what kind. And what tools are available. It might be simpler just to build one.”

“You can do that?”

“I can build just about anything,” Tony says. “Given the right circumstances.”

He’s being cagey, and Steve’s not sure why. “And given these circumstances?”

A shrug. “Again, maybe. I want to focus on getting the communications system back online first, or at least the navigator. Give us some idea of where the hell we are. Apart from ‘Canada’,” he adds, and Steve isn’t sure if he’s being mocked. “It’s a big country, you know.”

Steve frowns. “You don’t think that can wait? Until we’ve got electricity and running water?”

“No,” Tony says. “I don’t.” He gets to his feet.

“But… the cold…” Steve trails off. Tony’s the one who will really feel it, not him.

“There’s a fireplace. We’ll make do.” The lamplight casts odd shadows across Tony’s face as he turns to look at Steve dead on. He smiles. It isn’t a nice expression. “Or is it that you’re worried about sharing a fire?”

Steve blinks, thrown by this unexpected attack, and its even more unexpected form. Tony takes the opportunity to step in, crowding him.

“Two men,” he says, his voice a low and sensuous purr, “huddled around the hearth, sharing warmth, far away from everything and with no one to know. Who knows what might happen?”

“Tony, what the hell—” Steve begins, but his voice comes out low and husky. He tries not to imagine it, the shifting play of firelight across dark hair and olive skin—

He swallows, summons up every ounce of command in him and feeds it all into his voice. “Stark. Stop it.”

Tony’s face goes blank. He takes a step back, passes a hand over his face. When he takes the hand away, he’s smiling again, something tight and wry that pulls at the corners of his lips but doesn’t reach his eyes.

Steve takes a breath. “If you think it’s best to focus on the comms, I trust your judgment.”

Tony blinks at some spot over Steve’s right shoulder. “I… do,” he says, not like he’s unsure, but like his certainty has suffered an outage and is only now coming back online. “Given the time frame, I— Absolutely. Yes.”

Steve wonders what he means by ‘given the time frame.’ Probably something technical and esoteric that’ll make Steve feel like an idiot and bring out that odd, lopsided tension between them again.

“I’ll have a look around the rest of the house,” he says. “See what I can find.”

Tony nods again. “Good, uh. Good plan.” He licks his lips. When he speaks again, his words are brisk. He sounds very nearly like his old self. “Let me know if you find anything interesting. Especially if it’s liquor. There’s bound to be a bottle or two squirreled away somewhere. I mean, how else do people survive this kind of winter?”

“I’m pretty sure people manage to survive just fine without booze, Tony.”

“Do they?” Tony says, as if Steve has just told him a piece of not very interesting trivia. “Well.” He stoops down to snag the second lamp where he’d left it on the floor. “Speaking solely for myself then, I could really use a drink.”

 

* * *

 

**x.     T + 10:00 hours**

 

There’s something almost meditative about chopping wood. A focused, productive violence. The sky has fully darkened in the time since they first entered the cabin, but Steve’s night vision is better than most, and he gets by.

After an hour or so, he hears the sound of the door and looks up to see Tony standing on the threshold to the house. He’s still got that fucking blanket around his shoulders, but if he’s made any other concession to the subzero temperatures, Steve can’t see it.

All the anger comes pouring back at once, all of the fear. In the space of a few seconds, Steve has dropped the ax, crossed the yard, and crowded Tony back into the house, slamming the door shut behind them.

“What the fuck were you thinking? Do you have any idea how cold it is?” And always, always the words he bites back, because Tony always makes him feel so much more than he can be allowed to say: _How can you be so careless with yourself? What makes you think you’re yours to waste?_

“I was coming to get you,” Tony says. He’s shivering violently _._

Steve chafes the blanket up and down Tony’s arms, like he’s toweling off a child, and Tony, wonder of wonders, lets him do it.

“You’ve got me,” Steve says. His voice is gruff and awkward even to his own ears. He strokes his hands down Tony’s shoulders and upper arms a few more times, then steps back. “What is it?”

Tony’s eyes are shut. “I fucked up,” he says. “I thought I could— Christ, it’s the entire afternoon’s work, gone.”

“Tell me what happened.”

Tony huffs out a laugh, tinged with hysteria at the edges. Steve has never seen him like this, this open, raw, like someone has taken a knife and pared him open to his bleeding core. “Me. I happened.”

“Tony, what—?”

“My fucking _hands_ , Steve.” Tony shoots one out in illustration, and Steve is so occupied with checking for a wound—some visible sign of damage—that it’s a moment before he realizes how badly it’s shaking.

Not shivering, then.

“I thought you were cold,” he says, stupidly. _Irritability,_ he remembers. _Loss of appetite. Shaking._

Tony sniffs, and lets out another mirthless giggle. “That too.”

Steve takes a breath. “But you still know what needs to be done, don’t you?”

“A fat lot of good that does us when I can’t fucking _do it._ ”

Steve shakes his head. For a genius, Tony sure does miss a lot of obvious things. He supposes it’s understandable, under the circumstances.

“It sounds to me,” he says, “like what you need is a pair of steady hands.” He reaches out, takes Tony’s single, trembling hand between both his own. “You’ve got that.”

Tony is staring down at their clasped hands like they’re something new, something strange and unprecedented.

“Just tell me what to do,” Steve says, “and I’ll do it. We’ll make this work, Tony,” and slowly, Tony nods.

Still holding Tony by the wrist, Steve leads him into the house, and for once, Tony follows, without quip, without question, silent and docile as a lamb.

 

* * *

 

**xvii.    T + 27:00 hours**

 

“You know, this isn’t how I imagined this would go,” Tony says.

He’s sitting mostly upright, leaned back against Steve’s chest, legs bracketed by Steve’s own. There’s so little Steve can do for him now, but he can give him this, the warmth of his body, the sturdiness of his four limbs. The comfort of his touch.

“Imagined what would go?” Steve’s back is to the wall, not so far from where he put a hole through it the day before. He’s pretty sure there’s plaster dust in his hair. He’s even more certain he doesn’t care.

“Me. Between your thighs.”

Steve snorts. “Yeah, me neither.”

Tony goes very still in his arms and Steve realizes what he’s just said. “Steve,” he breathes.

“No.”

“But—”

“I said _no_ , Tony. Not now. Not like this. When you’re… better. Then we can talk.”

He’s expecting Tony to argue. Some fatalistic carpe diem: _And if I don’t get better?_ or _What if this is our only chance?_ He almost wants Tony to argue, to convince him, because Tony is here, everything is here, in his arms, and the longing burns like bitter citrus on his tongue, but he _can’t do it._ He can’t let this be how it happens, a hasty declaration, a desperate thing between two desperate men. If they do this, they’re going to do it right.

“Is that a promise?” It sounds like a real question.

Steve’s voice comes out hoarse. “Yeah, Tony. That’s a promise.” And then, because he can no longer think of any reason not to, he presses his lips to the back of Tony’s head. He hears Tony sigh.

They sit like that for a long time. After a while Tony’s shaking gets worse again, violent, full-body tremors. Steve holds him through it.

When Tony next speaks, the words are so without context that Steve is afraid he’s fallen into another confusion. They’ve been coming more and more frequently, and lasting longer each time.

“They were too close.”

“Who were?”

“The people who lived here. They were here for… it must’ve been years, before AIM moved in, and—and maybe they saw something, or maybe the bastards decided it just _wasn’t worth the risk_ and they came here and they— and they—”

Steve lightly chafes Tony’s arms. Resettles him so Tony is tucked more snugly against his chest. Tony is a big man, but he’s not as big as Steve. They make it work.

“I know,” he says.

“And no one even found them,” Tony says, voice clear, tight with the horror of it all.

“We found them.”

“We weren’t even _looking_ —”

Tony gives a hiss as Steve’s hands clench involuntarily on his shoulders. Steve relaxes his grip, pets over Tony’s biceps apologetically.

“I hate them,” Tony says.

“I know.”

“If we get out of here, I am going to burn their miserable little organization to the ground.”

A line of scripture pops into Steve’s mind: _Rase it, rase it even to the foundation thereof._ He thinks of the hatred in Tony’s voice, of how it’s so much easier for both of them to focus on an enemy they can fight. He thinks about fear. He thinks about the word, “if.”

 _“And no one even found them,”_ Tony had said. _“We weren’t even looking.”_

“They’ll be looking for us, Tony. The Ultimates. SHIELD. Already, they’ll be looking. They’ll find us.”

There’s a long silence after that. When Tony speaks again, his voice is a single, weary thread.

“How do you know?”

 

* * *

 

**xiv.     T + 21:00 hours**

 

Despite only having gotten a few hours of sleep, Tony flatly refuses to go back to bed. “Nightmares,” is all he’ll say. He’s pouring sweat now, absolutely stinking of it. Steve melts some snow on the gas stove and gives Tony a sponge bath in the kitchen.

Tony is noticeably unhappy about Steve’s participation in this undertaking. “No need to make up excuses, sweetie-pie,” he says, trying to shoo Steve out of the room. “If you want to see me naked, all you ever have to do is ask.”

Steve crosses his arms and plants himself in the doorway. “Show me you can wash your back without falling over, and I’ll leave you to it,” he says. Needless to say, Steve stays.

Tony’s original clothes are rank, so Steve brings him a bathrobe he found in the bedroom closet. It’s a sign of just how bad things are that Tony doesn’t even protest. He chokes down a few bites of breakfast, Steve hovering hawklike over his shoulder, and then goes to the bathroom and throws it all back up.

“At least it’s snowing,” Steve says, rubbing his back.

“How is that a positive?”

“It’ll hide our tracks.”

Tony goes still beneath his hand. “I’d almost forgotten about that,” he says.

 _I haven’t_ , Steve thinks.

Tony insists on working after that, even though he’s still shaking hard enough to rattle the teeth in his head. Steve wants to argue, but then he thinks about what might be coming for them and, well. He figures Tony might have a point. They compromise, Tony on the mattress, propped up into semi-recumbent position with the cushions from the sofa, Steve kneeling by his head, and the armor spread on the coffee table between them.

The work is even more of a slog than it was the day before. Tony’s decided they need to prioritize repairing the power source today, which means that instead of tiny circuit boards, which were at least arranged on a flat plane and stayed where you put them, he’s now dealing with rivers of multicolored wires, which have to be untangled, repaired, and then reattached to a strangely shaped unit Steve has been forbidden to touch “if you value either of our lives.” Steve gathers, from Tony’s vague but dire warnings, that the suit runs on some kind of nuclear power.

“Properly we shouldn’t be going anywhere near this without specialized gear,” Tony admits, “but you’re superhuman, so it should be fine.”

“And what about you?”

“What’s the worst it can do?” Tony says. “Give me cancer?” and then he laughs like it’s actually funny.

But the greatest challenge bar to productivity is Tony himself. Tony looks—there’s no way around it— _awful_. He’s still shaking, still sweating. His skin is gray. He’s working through a splitting headache, a fact which he tries and fails to conceal from Steve, and he can’t keep down painkillers, and somehow, Steve has to _keep working_ with Tony shattering slowly into pieces beside him. And that’s not even the difficult part.

The difficult part is Tony’s mind. Most of the time he’s lucid, brain as sharp as anyone’s could be while in the amount of pain Tony must be in, but he keeps lapsing into little confusions like the one from this morning. It’s not always easy to tell when he is or isn’t in his right mind, and Steve’s body is tight with the fear that Tony will give him some mistaken instruction that will—that will turn the armor into a bomb, or— He scarcely knows what. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s taken to asking questions every time Tony gives him a new instruction—“Who am I?” “Where are we?” “Who’s the president?”—just to make sure it’s the right Tony speaking.

“You’re the apple of my eye,” Tony tells him. “We’re in the back end of beyond, and Canada has a prime minister, not a president. Link the blue wire to the third port from the left.”

Even when Tony is clear on who he is and what they’re doing, he’ll fall into fits of distraction, twitching and trailing off and darting nervous glances at the shadows.

“Is everything all right?” Steve asks, again and again and again.

“Peachy,” Tony says, but he won’t look Steve in the eye. “Lift it gently now. That’s the way.”

“I think I’ve got it…” Steve mutters.

Tony bends in to look, close enough that his forehead is almost touching Steve’s. It would be so easy to reach out and… and…

He hates this. He hates everything about this.

“Is that right?” he asks. He keeps his voice low. He wonders if Tony can feel Steve’s breath against his cheek. “Is it—”

With sudden, violent force, Tony upends the table. Steve manages to catch it before it flips over entirely, but he’s not fast enough to stop some of the circuitry from tipping onto the floor; he just barely manages to save the piece of the chestplate they’d been working on.

Tony scrambles back, kicking out as he does so, trying to knock the chestplate from Steve’s hand. Steve fends him off one-handed, the other pinning the plate to the table.

“Tony, what the hell?”

“Don’t touch it!” Tony’s eyes are wild. “Get it away, don’t touch it, get it _away!”_

“I don’t understand,” Steve says, angry, afraid, helpless. He shoves the table out of Tony’s reach and clambers onto the mattress, trying to pin Tony’s flailing legs with both hands. “Tony, what’s _wrong?”_

Tony’s face is horribly contorted. “Writhing,” he says, “twisting and twitching, Christ, they’re _all over—”_ and he’s slapping at his own arms now. Steve releases one leg to try and catch Tony’s wrists. Tony knees him in the gut.

They tussle for a minute or so longer, and then Tony abruptly goes limp.

“Tony?”

Tony is still shaking—Tony is always shaking, now, but at least it’s only the involuntary, low-level tremors, rather than that awful, scrabbling panic.

“S-sorry about that, sport,” he says, not looking Steve in the eye. “L-lost my head, a little, didn’t I? Hard to tell, sometimes, what’s there and…” He gives a more pronounced shudder, mouth working, and then says, as if he’s quoting something, “Why did it have to be _snakes?”_

Steve goes very still. Thinks of Tony’s constant nervousness, the way he twitches and flinches at nothing. “Tony. How long have you been seeing things?”

“Not so long. Few hours, maybe.”

They’ve only been awake for a few hours.

Steve pulls back abruptly, suddenly unable to bear to be touching Tony any longer. He sits back on the other end of the mattress. It seems Tony’s tremors are contagious, from the way his own hands are shaking. He balls them into fists and the shaking stops. “Any other symptoms you’ve been hiding from me?”

Tony is silent long enough that Steve knows the answer is yes; Tony’s just deciding whether or not to lie about it. “I’ve been hearing things,” he says finally. “Sometimes.”

“What— What kind of—”

“Animal sounds, mostly,” Tony says. “Scratching, and sl-slithering.”

“Mostly?” Steve echoes hollowly.

“Sometimes there are… other things.” Tony swallows audibly. “I didn’t want to worry you.”

“It’s a little late for that now,” Steve snaps, and clamps his jaw shut. He feels like a bomb primed to go off. There’s so much packed inside him, so much _violence_ —fear, anger, grief, and he has to keep tamping it down and tamping it down. It doesn’t seem possible to go on like this, and yet he knows he has to. He lowers his face into his hands. “Just… please,” he says, and his voice splinters on the word. “I want to help, but I can’t do that if I don’t know what’s happening. Let me help.” The word sticks in his throat a second time, but he mouths it just the same: _Please._

He hears the creaking of springs, feels weight shifting on the mattress. There’s a whiff of sour, human smell—Tony has already begun to stink again—and then there’s a damp body fitting itself to his, draping over his back, resting a whiskered chin on his shoulder. An arm reaches around in a half embrace; Steve catches the hand in his and presses it to his chest.

“You’re better to me than I deserve,” Tony murmurs, and Steve wants to cry.

“You’ll let me?” he says, and his voice is raw, plaintive. “You’ll let me help?”

Tony sighs in his ear. “I’m not much good at that, darling. But I’ll try.”

Steve can’t help himself. He twists, wraps his arms around Tony, buries his face in Tony’s shoulder.

“Oh,” Tony says, sounding surprised. “It’s all right. There, now.” He raises a hand to stroke Steve’s hair, and now Steve is swallowing back sobs because Tony is comforting _him,_ and he has never in his life been so useless, or so weak.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters, pulling away.

“Oh, now, none of that,” Tony says, trying to tug him back, and his grip is so damn feeble. “You’ve been so good. The best I could have wished for.”

“Really?” The word slips out before Steve can stop it and he wants to punch himself. Of course he’s not what Tony would have asked for. Tony would have asked for Thor, or Pietro—someone who could actually go and get help, or he would have asked for a doctor, or he would have asked for this _not to have happened._ He would’ve asked for a fucking drink.

“Really,” Tony says. He gives Steve’s shirt another tug. Steve swings back around to face him, and Tony moves forward into his space. He looks Steve right in the eyes, and smiles. “You’re a good brother, Greg,” he says, and raises his hand to Steve’s cheek.

 

* * *

 

**i.       T + 00:02 hours**

 

Steve has been waiting in the penthouse lobby for twenty minutes and is working his way into a foul temper when Tony comes sweeping down the stairs.

“Steve,” he says, with what seems to be genuine pleasure. “What an unanticipated delight! You’re looking square-jawed as ever.”

As Tony comes forward, it strikes Steve, not for the first time, just how handsome he is. He looks like what you’d get if you assembled a matinee idol piece by piece. Dark hair, check. Broad shoulders, check. Straight nose, firm jaw, white teeth, check, check, check. As dazzling and distant as any star of the silver screen, only then he turns and smiles right at you and suddenly he’s in your orbit and it’s so easy to pretend he could belong there; so easy to pretend he’s something you can keep. It’s why, Steve knows, all those people go to bed with him. It’s why Steve himself never has. He’s had his fill of transient things.

Tony is smiling now. “So sorry for the delay, old boy.”

Steve glowers back. “This was a high priority summons—”

Tony gives a dismissive click of the tongue. “If it was really that urgent, they’d have sent a flunky over to fetch me, or better yet, simply called. If they can spare Captain America long enough to squire me across town, they can spare me long enough to finish my drink.”

“You left me cooling my heels for a _drink?”_

Tony looks pained. “When you put it like that, it sounds so unreasonable. Would it help if I said it was a very _good_ drink? I’ve been teaching Jarvis here how to mix a martini the way I like it; he’s a wonderfully quick study.”

“Sir is too kind,” the manservant says, dry as bone. He’s followed Tony down the stairs and is now waiting at a respectful distance. Steve wonders what the man’s real name is. Maybe it really is Jarvis, and Tony hired him on the strength of that alone. It sounds like the kind of thing Tony would do.

“Come on,” Tony says. “I’ve kept you waiting long enough. We’ll take one of my cars and you can fill me in on the way.”

Steve is taken aback. “My bike…” he begins, but Tony waves the objection away.

“We’ll have it refueled and fully serviced. My little apology. Leave Jarvis your key; he’ll see to everything.” And with that, he breezes past Steve in a waft of gin.

Steve hesitates, then, with a huff of irritation, thrusts out his keys for the manservant to take. “She likes a light touch, especially on the corners.”

“I’ll be sure to inform the relevant parties,” the man says, gravely.

Tony’s voice echoes down the hall. “No one likes a dawdler, Steve.”

“For the love of—” Steve mutters. He catches the manservant’s eye. They share a moment of perfect accord before Steve starts down the hallway himself, wondering if he’s somehow destined to be always a step behind, forever following in Tony’s wake.

 

* * *

 

**xviii.   T + 34:00 hours**

 

It’s around nightfall on the second day when the seizures start. Steve’s in the kitchen, heating up a can of beef broth—liquid is the only thing Tony’s had any success keeping down—when he hears a small cry, and races back to the living room to find Tony, flat on his back and convulsing violently.

His body springs into action, even as his mind gibbers and flails. _Stop the shaking,_ the part of him currently operating his limbs thinks. He gets on top of Tony on all fours, knees weighing down Tony’s thighs, hands pinning his wrists as Tony bucks and shudders against him like some parody of intimacy. His eyes have rolled so far back in his head that little more than the whites are visible; his mouth is foaming; his jaw is clenched tight.

It feels like an eternity, although it can’t be more than a few minutes, before the seizure stops. Tony’s eyes fall shut and he relaxes, limp, into unconsciousness. An unmistakable odor fills the air; looking down, Steve sees a wet stain trickle out from between Tony’s legs and down into the sheets.

Tony comes back round while Steve is cleaning him up, but he’s disoriented and it’s almost immediately clear he has no idea what’s going on or who Steve is. “You’re had an accident,” Steve tells him, again and again, fighting to keep his voice even, steady, soothing. “I’m your friend. I’m here to help.”

Tony regains his lucidity long enough to let Steve finish cleaning him and drink a little water. Steve lifts him bodily and carries him to the couch, then goes to strip the bedding. As an afterthought, he tears off a long strip from the clean end of the sheet.

“I thought maybe we could… wrap it round,” he says, gesturing vaguely to Tony’s groin. “Just in case.”

Tony tips his head back on the arm of the sofa. “Sure,” he says. The exhaustion in his voice sounds sickeningly close to defeat. “Why not,” and he lets Steve swaddle him like an incontinent toddler. Steve leaves to get fresh sheets from the bedroom. He’s just ready to head back when he hears a loud thump. He runs, bed linens forgotten in a heap on the floor.

Tony is lying on the carpet next to the sofa. He’s seizing again.

It takes even longer for him to regain consciousness this time, and longer still before he knows who Steve is. Even then, he can barely stay awake long enough to swallow another mouthful or two of water.

“M’sorry,” he slurs. “I hate to—to burden you, darling, but… M’so damn _tired._ ”

“Sleep,” Steve tells him, throat tight, eyes burning. “If you need to sleep, then sleep.”

Tony’s head is already lolling as Steve carefully lowers him to the mattress. “S’cold.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, thinking of the abandoned bedsheets, wondering if he dares leave Tony alone long enough to fetch them.

“You could… hol’ me,” Tony mumbles, and then, “warm,” and then he’s out.

Steve ends up fetching the sheets in the end. He leaves most of them on the side, for use in case of further accidents, but he picks out one, a soft cotton knit, Iron Man red. He carefully lowers himself onto the bed beside Tony and pulls the sheet over them both. He shuts his eyes and listens to the noises of the night.

The fire crackles on the hearth; the house creaks occasionally as it settles. Outside the wind whistles through the trees. But he’s not really listening for that, or even for the sound of Tony’s stertorous breathing, the racing of his heart.

He’s listening for the whir of helicopters, for the soft crunch of boots in the snow. Either noise might mean rescue. Either might mean death. He’ll have no way of knowing until the first shot is fired—or isn’t.

He pulls Tony closer to him, buries his face in the crook of Tony’s shoulder—skin too hot, rank with sweat, alive, alive, alive—and prays that they’ll both make it through the night.

**Author's Note:**

> Guys, I went from brainstorm to post with this over the course of five days, I have never in my life written so much so fast, my head is in a whirl. But I had fun, despite the suffering, and I hope you did too! Happy Ults Day, lovelies!
> 
> Find me on tumblr [here](http://whenas-in-silks.tumblr.com/post/179126656255/fic-all-of-your-lonely-sieges) or at my designated Marvel blog [here](http://sister-stark.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> EDIT: I accidentally posted a much older draft for a few of the initial scenes; they've now been updated, but just in case you read the story during the first 16 hours or so after it was posted and are now rereading and wondering if you're crazy, you're not.


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